Elmont student accepted by all 8 Ivy League schools

Ten years ago, Harold Ekeh and his family moved from Nigeria to the U.S., living in Queens before settling in Elmont. Now the Elmont Memorial High School senior has been accepted to all eight Ivy League schools, along with several other colleges and universities.

“The first acceptance letter I received was from Yale, and I was just incredibly excited,” said Ekeh, 17, who was 8 when his family left from Nigeria. “To be honest, I was stunned. I was in disbelief. Yale was one of my top schools, and I know how difficult it is to get in there, so I was just incredibly humbled.”

The excitement did not stop after Yale offered him a spot in its class of 2019. Soon, acceptance letters from the seven other Ivies — Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania — came rolling in, along with letters from other renowned institutions, including Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Vanderbilt University.

“I never even considered that I would get accepted to all of those schools,” said Ekeh (pronounced EKK-ay). “I just wanted to go to a great school that would allow me to go on to medical school after I graduated.”

It is easy to see why so many schools would welcome Ekeh, who scored 2270 out of 2400 on the SAT college admissions exam, was an Intel Science Talent Search semifinalist and has a grade point average of 100.51 at Elmont Memorial.

In addition to his impressive academic resume, he is the vice president of the school’s Key Club, performs with the drum corps, is heavily involved with Model United Nations, serves as a mentor for underclassmen looking for guidance as they prepare for their own college searches, and was involved with the Homecoming Court at Elmont.

His activities are not limited to the halls of Memorial, however. Ekeh spends hours each week at his church, Winner’s Throne of Grace Ministries in Rosedale, where he began playing drums in the church band when he was 8. He is president of the church youth group, and founded a youth choir, which he directs.